


Underground

by swooning



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:52:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens in the rebel tunnels under New Caprica...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Underground

It had been only a few days, but she found she already craved the sunlight to a degree that could only be primal. Her forebrain elucidated all the reasons that taking to the mines so soon after liberation from the Cylon firing squad was necessary for her survival; her hindbrain, however, stubbornly insisted that humans were not meant to survive under ground, and that she must seek a way up and out.   
  
Fortunately for Laura, she was a politician, and had long experience at subordinating instinct to rationalization. Not that she didn’t pay a price, of course. Although she might try to reason with her dreaming self, the nightmares always fought their way through in the end. And thus it was that she found herself wrenched awake, trying to scream, from a dream of being buried alive, only to find herself still in a hole in the ground. She bit back her scream, aware even in the dream that she was only doing it to wake herself, but could not stop a whimper from escaping as she sat bolt upright on the narrow cot.   
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
She gasped and spun around in a panic at the low voice, only to find an unlikely guardian watching over her. She had gone to sleep under the eye of Sam Anders, and awakened in the keeping of Tom Zarek. It took her unaided eyes a minute to frame his outline in the dim, filtered light cast by the single bulb in the adjacent chamber… but she had known his voice immediately.  
  
“Laura… are you okay?” He moved closer, hunkering near the foot of her ‘bed,’ peering through the gloom.   
  
“Fine,” she said crisply, or intended to say crisply. It emerged weak and shaky instead, a pitiful little utterance that gave her away.   
  
“Was it… were you… buried?”  
  
She nodded, rubbing the bridge of her nose wearily. She had needed the sleep, but avoided it too long, and now had it cut too short.   
  
“That one’s bad,” Zarek offered empathetically. He would have reason to know, of course; they had all had the dream at least once by now. People weren’t designed to live below the surface of the land. Still, he was an unlikely source of support. “You still have another three hours to sleep, if you can.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“Mm. I know the feeling.”  
  
“Any new developments while I was out?” She stretched as she spoke, and then began methodically folding the rough military blanket that had covered her.   
  
“No, just waiting. I think everyone not on watch is, um… asleep.” It was a diplomatic way to put it; she knew quite well what the young and adrenaline-filled who faced imminent death did with their spare time, and that it involved little sleep.   
  
Zarek stood and moved over to the large crate that served as a table; it stood opposite her cot in the rough chamber, and held a lantern and a bundle of cloth that he knew protected the remnants of her copy of the Pythian prophecies. When he made as if to light the lantern, she spoke softly to stop him.   
  
“Just leave it. I don’t really need it, I’m not going to do any work, so it would be a waste.” She stood and placed the folded blanket where she had been sitting. “Thank you very much, Mr. Zarek, I’m fine now.”   
  
“Have I just been dismissed?”  
  
She smiled despite herself – her real smile, not the one she had been sporting – and nodded slowly. “That was the general idea, yes. It, ah, always used to work with my security detail.”  
  
“Well, there’s your problem. Boy, have you got your audience wrong.”  
  
He had turned and was half-sitting on the crate, now, looking as though leaving were the furthest thing from his mind. Laura felt a prickle of annoyance, which was quickly replaced by a prickle of something else she couldn’t quite place.   
  
“Was there something you wanted to speak to me about?”  
  
“No, just passing the time. In pleasant company.”  
  
“That’s very gallant, Tom. Why do I think you have a hidden agenda?”  
  
Zarek chuckled. “Laura… it almost sounds like you don’t trust me.”  
  
“As far as I can throw you,” she replied evenly.   
  
“Would that be down a hill, or…?”  
  
When they both laughed, the unfamiliar feeling returned, followed immediately by a rush of recognition.  _Oh, so that’s what’s going on._ It had been so long since the last time Laura flirted for the sole purpose of flirting that she had actually forgotten what it felt like.   
  
Of course, she reminded herself, flirting  _does_  have a purpose. But… Zarek? She would be lying to herself if she didn’t acknowledge she had thought of him that way; he was empirically attractive, and personally compelling, and she had always had a penchant for men who were confident to the point of arrogance. But still… Zarek?  
  
“We don’t  _have_  a hill here, of course. And I’ve never had much of an arm.”  _What the hell, what do I have to lose at this point?_ Laura sat back down on the cot, scooting nearly back to the packed earthen wall, and pulling her knees up in front of her. She wouldn’t approach him first. She might be amenable, but she was inclined to make him work for it.   
  
“I wouldn’t know,” he said, with a sidelong glance at her; he seemed to be assessing his chances, and Laura let a tiny smile play about her lips. “I‘ve never really paid much attention to your arms,” Zarek admitted, looking pointedly down at her legs and then back up to her eyes. Catching, holding her gaze, as blatant as a physical caress.   
  
Lust flickered, flared, and caught in the spaces between Laura’s heart and hips, and she felt it appear in her own expression, even as Zarek’s eyes widened in speculation, then narrowed with purpose. If she had had it in her, she would have feigned coyness, innocence, drawn things out. But there was not much time left for that sort of thing, and her skills had grown rusty through lack of use. When she spoke again, her voice had grown husky, deeper through no design of her own, again giving her away entirely.   
  
“So… what was that you were saying about my legs?” She was doing well enough, not to sound desperate, she supposed. But it seemed to be effective with Zarek, either way. He stood up slowly and approached her a bit warily, waiting until he was standing next to the cot to speak again.   
  
“I wasn’t. But if I had been, I might have said that they could drive even a sane man to distraction.” He knelt in front of her, and carefully circled his hands around her ankles, his thumbs resting in the hollows just above her inner heel on either side. Just enough outward pressure to suggest, subtly, that if he applied only a bit more he would be parting her legs. Or perhaps that was only the suggestion Laura’s own mind made, drenched in hormones as it currently was.   
  
“And why would that be?” Almost a whisper, now. She felt exposed, as if she were naked in front of him, her sudden inexplicable need for him overwhelming any reason she had left. But perhaps there was still a bit of coyness left, after all. “Or should I be asking a sane man?”  
  
His smile widened to a grin that could only be described as wicked. In response to her flippant question, he said nothing, only slid his hands with excruciating slowness from her ankles up to her knees, always applying that same hint of pressure, only enough to hint without ever actually pushing her legs to either side. It made her  _want_  him to push, even though she knew he was doing it to evoke exactly that reaction.  _I am literally aching to spread my legs for this man._  
  
“A sane man wouldn’t be doing this.”  
  
It was Laura’s turn to smile, more smugly than wickedly. “I don’t know whether to be offended or flattered.”  
  
“Flattered,” he clarified with a straight face, just before he finally slid his hands up to her inner thighs and levered them apart so he could lean between them and claim her mouth with his.   
  
Laura had imagined finesse from Zarek in this, and finesse there certainly was. But along with that, there was a simple enthusiasm that was surprisingly infectious. He  _liked_  this, it made her feel that he  _liked_  her, and she suddenly realized another aspect to the danger that was Tom Zarek, the reason people would follow him to their deaths. He was a man who could make a person feel valued. Feel necessary.   
  
He made her  _feel_. His lips, teasing hers open to admit his tongue more deeply; his hands, stroking her thighs, slipping behind to cup her ass and draw her closer. Nerve endings she had forgotten about fired to life, all seeming tied by invisible threads to the warm nexus of her thighs, now pressed firmly and rhythmically against Zarek’s hardening erection.   
  
She was lost in the kiss, insensible, and didn’t realize his hands had moved until she felt him slip her shirt from her shoulders. The shock of the dank, cold air made her gasp a little; the warmth of his long fingers rising to her breasts and brushing her already-hard nipples made her moan into his mouth. She arched her back and leaned into his touch, wrapping her legs around his waist to   
keep him as close as possible.   
  
It wasn’t enough. Zarek untangled her reluctantly, rose to his feet pulling her with him, and started undressing her in earnest, pulling the shirt free of her arms, unbuttoning and unzipping her borrowed fatigue pants, but pausing to kiss her again once they had fallen to the floor, once she stood in front of him in only a pair of cotton underwear that had seen better days. He pulled her close, his hands at her waist, and flicked his tongue against hers playfully, as if there were all the time in the worlds for what they were about to do. She recognized the sensation, now; it made her want him more, like giving only a drop of water to a person dying of thirst. When she plied a hand between them, pressing firmly against his length, he raised his head and looked at her, considering. Plotting, she thought, and for once it was a welcome thought. That rare occasion where she  _wanted_  Zarek to be up to no good.   
  
She could see his expression well enough to see the gears were still spinning as he bent down, this time bypassing a kiss and dipping lower. Hot breath against one breast, then the other, strong fingers framing tender flesh but never quite touching. A brush of lips near, but not on, a peaked nipple. And finally, when the frustration was almost too much to bear, a knowledgeable tongue flickering out once, then twice, and then a third time over her nipple, before lips and tongue encircled it entirely. His fingers, on the other side, echoing the rhythm as he suckled and teased, drawing a stifled groan from his willing victim.   
  
Laura had woven her fingers in his hair, and stood enthralled to what he was doing. It had been too long, she was too completely at his mercy, and in fact she knew that if he continued much longer she would climax before they ever reached the actual sex. Not that she minded. However, as it happened, he did stop, with a parting fondle, and pulled away just far enough to start taking his clothes off.   
  
If Laura hadn’t noticed his hands shaking a little, she would have bought his seeming calm. She preferred knowing that he was human, and affected by this as much as she was. Nearly as much, at least. She pushed his hands away and deftly unbuttoned his heavy wool overshirt, pulling it off and letting him deal with the thermal shirt beneath while she went to work on his belt and trousers.   
  
“Boots,” she said softly, and pragmatically he sat on the cot to begin unlacing them. They both knew there was no seductive way to remove a pair of work boots. Seductive was Laura, sliding her underwear off and stepping out of them; she had to gently remind Tom to continue unlacing his boots. “And close your mouth,” she added, smirking as she joined him on the cot. She sat behind him, spooning her stomach against his back, slipping one leg along either side of his hips, wrapping her arms around him to explore the textures his bared chest had to offer. She nuzzled his back compulsively, biting gently here and there, satisfying an oral fixation she had been stifling for years. Rewarding, to hear him moan almost inaudibly, as her fingers tweaked his nipples in tandem with the roving, hungry motions of her lips, teeth and tongue. The soft vibration of his voice was felt, more than heard, against her mouth and cheek.  
  
She worked her hands lower, into the waistband of his loosened pants, and then laughed softly, startled.   
  
“No underwear, Tom?”   
  
He craned his neck to look over his shoulder at her. “Not by choice. I just don’t have any more.” And then he blinked in response as she gripped his erection with one slender hand, and began working the engorged organ with slow, firm strokes. “Gods…”  
  
He was startled that she continued to hold his gaze, that she was quite evidently practiced at what she was doing, and that she was not so much as blushing, sitting there naked behind him with his cock in her hand. It was Zarek’s turn to recognize the hidden danger of his partner; she was a siren in spinster-schoolteacher’s clothing, and although he had somehow known – or at least strongly suspected – this, her disguise was so complete that he still found himself a little shocked by her behavior when her mask fell away. A little shocked, but a lot aroused.   
  
Only the prospect of being inside Laura Roslin could have tempted him to tug her hand away, so that he could shuck his pants and rejoin her on the wholly inadequate cot, sliding behind her this time in the position she had taken earlier, and pulling her back to lean against his chest. The cot creaked under their combined weight, and they shared a dubious look as they considered their options.   
  
“We probably need to decide in advance,” she remarked. “Not nearly as big a mood-killer as falling off in the middle…”  
  
“Or having it break,” he agreed. “But planning it in advance doesn’t have to be a mood-killer.” He leaned in to nestle under the hair at her neck, nibbling at sensitive skin before assaulting her ear with a series of delicate nips. “Here’s my plan,” he whispered, feeling her shiver at the meeting of hot breath and fevered flesh. As he went on, he began exploring her body with both hands, slow sweeps and gentle squeezes that promised without delivering. Yet. “First, you lie down, and I go down on you… because I’ve wanted to make you come that way since the first time we met.”  
  
“Oh, Gods,” she whispered, melting under the influence of his words, his mouth, and his roving hands. Now, she blushed, from her face clear down to her stomach, although Zarek was no longer in a position to see it. His fingers brushed along her thighs to her lap, swept across her labia suddenly, just long enough to retrieve a bit of the moisture already gathered there and bring it up to his lips, just long enough to elicit a small, inarticulate cry from her.   
  
“You taste good,” he remarked needlessly. Of  _course_  she did. “Tell me what you think about the plan so far.”  
  
“Good.” He had reduced her to words of one syllable, which she would not have thought possible ten minutes ago. She wondered a moment if she cared, that at some point she had completely lost control of the situation. But then he spoke again, driving that thought from her mind.   
  
“Next,  _I_  get to lie down, and you return the favor for awhile. But not too long, because what I really want is to come inside you. And I want you to be on top the first time, because I want to be able to see you and touch you when we finally frak.” His hands had not been still; she was almost writhing, leaning against his chest in abandon as he teased. He made his last point very clear by putting an end to teasing, slipping one hand around a breast to roll a nipple between his thumb and fingers, sliding the other hand between her legs and cupping her now flagrantly wet pussy.   
  
“Tom…”   
  
“Good plan, Ms. Roslin?”  
  
She thought she might explode if she didn’t come soon; she suspected he did not plan to let her. “Works for me,” she whispered, and let him lower her to her back.   
  
Coherence left her when he tugged her to the end of the cot and knelt on the floor, pulling her calves up over his shoulders without preamble. Far from teasing now, he planted a series of blazing kisses from the inside of her knee up to the taut ligament that spanned the space between thigh and pelvis. That piece of sinew, he first kissed and then bit, gently and then slowly less so, only releasing the pressure when she cried out softly. But then the carefully soothing sweeps of his tongue against the insulted skin, the weird cross between pain and pleasure, brought a cry of approval, and he repeated the action on the other side.   
  
 _How can I be letting him bite me?_  Amazing, but moot now that he shifted his attention and started working his way toward his final goal. Bringing his hands into play to spread her lips wider, tracing the outline of her vulva with the tip of his tongue,  _tasting_  her. And humming appreciatively when he found that he enjoyed her flavor, very much. Long, exploring licks, now, along her center, always stopping just shy of her throbbing clitoris, despite the encouraging pressure of her hands on his head suggesting he travel just that half-inch further. He worked his tongue inside her, thrusting a few slow, agonizing times until her hips began to move in automatic opposition. Pulling away, and then meeting his mouth, a needy sob emerging as his ministrations grew more urgent in response to her transparent desire.   
  
She was already so close to peaking that she thought the invasion of his finger, thrusting where his tongue had so recently wrought magic, would be her undoing. But it wasn’t, quite, and she moaned her frustration only to hear, and feel, Zarek’s chuckle. His hot breath again, and his lips encircling, but not quite touching, her clit, teasing it as he had done with her nipple earlier. So that she remembered, and knew that he would be keeping her frustrated awhile longer.  _Damn, he’s too good at this_. Laura was startled to her herself whispering, “Please, please,” in time to the lift and fall of her hips.   
  
He finally obliged, working a second finger inside her and drawing her clit between his lips, flicking his tongue back and forth against it and feeling her start to tighten almost instantly. Her breath came in short gasps, her fingers flexed and gripped his hair, and her hips bucked against him as her control flew away.  _I made her do that,_  he thought smugly, and then she was over the edge.   
  
Laura felt it sweep over her, the first rush a little weaker than she had anticipated. She didn’t have time to be disappointed. Zarek never ceased the movements of his hands and talented tongue, and a second orgasm followed on the heels of the first, and it was almost too much. The sensation flooded her, center to extremities, in wave after wave of tension and release, until her cries were almost for mercy as much as for relief. She thought she might pass out, she saw stars against the black of her closed eyelids, and then it was ebbing away, and she wondered how she had survived it, and how she could ever survive again without it.   
  
Zarek was kissing, now, soft, soothing kisses along the swollen lips of her pussy, his fingers no longer thrusting, but pressing gently inside her to calm away the last of her shuddering spasms. It was affectionate, unexpected.  _Dangerous, Laura,_  she reminded herself, and felt tears spring to her eyes, that the reality was so different from the show with this man. She wanted to trust him, she wanted him to do  _that_  again, and she hated having to splash cold water on her mind when her body was still screaming for him.   
  
On one level, of course, that was an urge she could satisfy. She sat up, bracing herself on her arms, and watched as Tom lifted his head, smiling wolfishly with her fluids still smeared on his chin. He freed his still-occupied hand, and raised the fingers to her mouth. She obligingly sucked them clean, holding his hand in both of hers, keenly aware of his reaction. She was not above working that angle, and she did, tilting her head so he could see her lips pucker to accept his fingers.   
  
Zarek made a midcourse correction to his own plan, standing up with his hand still in her mouth; the action put his penis at a level too convenient for coincidence. He removed any doubt by leaning closer, placing his other hand against her cheek to feel her jaw working. He traced the edge of her lip with his thumb, before pulling his fingers from her mouth and taking his stiff cock in hand.   
  
Laura wrapped her fingers around his, lacing through them so she could feel the soft skin covering the hardness of the engorged flesh. Her other hand found and cupped his balls, and then it was Zarek’s turn to lose the ability to speak in multisyllables, as Laura leaned in and took his tip between her lips. Their combined hands moved together, until his slipped away and left her to do what she would.   
  
“ _Yes_ ,” he whispered once, as he stroked her face. And then, when his eyes closed involuntary as she finally took him as far in as she could and let her tongue play along the ridge that ran from glans to testicles, “ _Oh, it’s… good. So good._ ”  
  
She could taste him, at the back of her throat, at the sides of her tongues, salt sweat and that other, uniquely male flavor; and she could smell the musky scent that gathered there, in the coarse curls of hair that impeded her work, tickled her nose, tried to lodge in her teeth. Never a huge fan of this particular facet of sex, she found herself liking it more than she recalled, hungry for it even. With Richard, she had always felt at a disadvantage giving head; his attitude made her feel somehow subordinated, oddly lonely. He had always seemed to think he was  _entitled_  to that. With Zarek, she found she felt powerful, a feeling she had learned to like in other arenas. Not that he was any less masterful, or certainly any less arrogant, than Adar had been; but Tom just seemed to be enjoying the act for its own sake. It felt good, he was just vocal enough in his appreciation to reassure, and for once she felt supremely unconcerned that he had an ulterior motive; she knew his motive inside and out, literally, and she had him exactly where she wanted him.   
  
Well, almost.   
  
Only when his breathing grew ragged, when she glanced up and saw that his head was thrown back, did she pull her mouth away and slide wordlessly back on the cot, drawing him down with her as if he were attached by strings, unable to be more than a set distance away. Per his stated request, she let him lie down first; he did so with a groan, his breath still hitching in his chest. His eyes slitted open just far enough to watch her straddle him, lower herself… and then stop, toying with him, using him to toy with herself, until neither of them could stand prolonging the inevitable a moment longer. Zarek’s hands pressed her hips down, just as she slid down onto him with a wordless sound of pleasure.   
  
He felt so good inside her, it felt so good to be filled by him, she paused again to savor it, before adjusting her legs, taking him in fully, feeling her clit brush against his pelvis as she reached the physical limit of their joining. Tom’s hips thrust up, she moved to meet him, and between them they found a tempo, learned it, began to improvise. But not much, not for long. His hands at her breasts, her nails raking lightly down his chest as she moved over him, were extra stimulus neither of them needed. Zarek’s jaw was clenched, he was trying not to come, but Laura demonstrated no such restraint. As he looked on, she brought a hand to her lower abdomen, began to stroke her clit with an elegant finger, and bit her lip to keep from screaming as she came in a glorious, selfish rush around him.   
  
It was too much, and Zarek exploded inside her, his shuddering prolonging her climax, both of them clutching, shaking, grasping at one another for stability as their bodies flew apart and then slowly, blissfully, reassembled.   
  
“Gods, you’re incredible,” he murmured, staring up at her in something like awe. Laura smiled thoughtfully at him.   
  
“Tom, how long since the last time you did that?”  
  
“Too frakking long, obviously.”  
  
What she would have said next, he never discovered. The sounds of footsteps and voices jolted them from their post-coital reverie, and they flung themselves apart and back into their clothes so quickly that neither was quite sure how they managed it. Laura would come to regret her haste… the long, buttoned, man’s shirt she currently wore was ample enough to hide it, but she would feel the wet reminder of Tom’s presence inside her for the rest of that day, as it slowly seeped out into her pants.   
  
And later she discovered he knew it, the smug frak. Found it arousing, to know she was walking around like that all day. Or so he told her after the final tense meeting of the evening, after the last of the plans had been set for the next day’s scheduled rush for freedom, after most of the freedom fighters had departed to their various holes and corners of the mine to spend the last night on New Caprica however they each saw fit. While Tyrol and Anders fiddled with the communication system, trying to decide whether to try to salvage it in pieces or simply abandon it, Zarek calmly leaned over to Laura as they both sat on the crate across the carved-out room and whispered this knowledge in her ear; this, of course, only compounded her problem.   
  
She determined that immediate resolution was the only viable option.   
  
“Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get cleaned up and try to get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”  
  
And she left him there, stuck until the Chief and Starbuck’s man had finished their tinkering and bickering and departed.   
  
He woke her later, which did not surprise her. And they frakked again, this time with few words but an unexpected quality of affection between them. He lingered on top of her, pinning her with his weight and stroking the long, wild strands of hair away from her face as he held himself back, made her come first, and then brought her back to her senses with gentle kisses. When he came himself it was quiet, but intense, as if it were a profound thing with him. He kept watching her as long as he could, until physiology shut his eyes for him; she felt seen through, found out, but also connected in some new way that had little to do with the sex. She saw through him too, saw his fear, his stubbornness, his peculiar brand of honor… and falling asleep afterward, curled into his chest, wrapped in his arms, she was reconciled to what she saw. If it were to be the last time, the last man, because they all died tomorrow, he had been more than simply the man who was available. More to her, more to all of them. He had merits of his own.  
  
And if they did not die tomorrow… well. She would work that out tomorrow. 


End file.
